Leader's Thought: Servant leadership in practice.

Read Transcript Below:

Hey, this is Florin with another video. I hope you have a great day.

The topic that I want to share with you today, is servant leadership. And I want you to grasp this because I was not as good as I wanted to be when I was in a leadership position when I led teams and projects. I didn't apply this to the best degree, but I hope you will. I hope you would get this and you apply it.

Some of you that know, last November we had the Live2Lead event in Gothenburg which was a broadcast event from Atlanta, Georgia. And one of the speakers at the event was Chris Hogan. Chris is very well known in the United States and internationally as a keynote speaker and for his motivational talks.

One of the things he shared that stuck with me ever since was this idea of servant leadership. Not only the idea but how do you put it in practice?

Like servant leadership in practice. And he shared three tips with us, and here they are.

First thing, if you want to really show servant leadership, if you want to apply this, if you want to take it from understanding a concept and knowing that servant leadership is important to actually doing the work, to show that you are a servant leader, here are my thoughts on this.

First, ask your people how are you today?

How is it going today? 

And note that I dropped my tone of voice 'cause I really want to know. 

We all have been in a situation where someone asks you, how are you today, just, you know, to be polite. But they didn't really want to know how we are that day. We see that immediately cause they switch the subject.

So if you want to show servant leadership, think about the other person and ask them how are you today?

When you step into your workplace, when you meet your colleagues, your peers, your team members, even your supervisor, your managers, ask them, how are you today? in a tone that says I really want to know.

So first thing, ask them how are you today?

Secondly, ask them what you're working on? 

What are you working on?

This allows you to stay up to date, to understand what it is that they're working on, what project they're working on, and maybe adjust some priorities if you feel they might not work on some things you feel is are a higher priority.

This gives you the knowledge and then shows that you're interested to know what they're working on and that their work is important.

So whenever you have a discussion, you meet at the coffee machine with one of your team members, even someone from another team, ask them, how are you today? What you're working on? And ask a third thing, how can I help?

This is really huge. I mean, how can I help you? This is the differentiator. It will set you apart. This is the difference-maker. 

I need to think about my team because that's why it's servant leadership.

I'm not served. 

I serve.

My mission as a leader is to remove obstacles for my team.

For me, it was to bring resources to my team so they can perform.

So this idea of servant leadership, it's very easy to get caught up into, you know, the linguistics of "servant."

You might think if I'm serving so I'm down here and if I'm served, I must be up there.

Nothing can be further from the truth. 

​​You could serve from wherever you are in your organization. And if you adopt these three ideas and you apply this when you walk into your office with everyone you meet, you will set yourself apart from the crowd and you will practice servant leadership.

So again, how are you today?

What you're working on?

How can I help?

I hope this added value to you. I hope it served you. I hope it gave you a little bit of a different idea on servant leadership. And I hope you would apply to your workplace.

I would love for you to comment and let me know how did it work? What did you discover?

What did you find out by just asking these three questions?